Articles

Noah's Ark... Page 4

Satellites Search For Ancient Artifact

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month- on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. --Genesis 7

Military and private satellite snapshots of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey reveal an anomaly that researchers say might be the remains of Noah's Ark.

A soon-to-be-launched commercial spacecraft will focus powerful cameras on the mysterious mountainside oddity to help unravel its true nature. In the past, expeditions permitted to search the area for what some claim are the ruins of Noah's Ark, while failing to conclusively prove its existence, have succeeded in sustaining debate. The area itself is a geopolitical and religious hot spot, with Mount Ararat sitting in the far eastern frontier of Turkey, near the borders of Armenia, Georgia (formerly part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR) and Iran. Even the late Apollo 15 moonwalker James Irwin was repeatedly drawn to Mount Ararat in hopes of finding Ark wreckage. Through his High Flight Foundation, a non-profit evangelical organization based in Colorado Springs, the former astronaut made six treks to Mount Ararat in an unsuccessful quest to find remains of the ark. Irwin's last expedition in 1990 ran into trouble. Turkish police detained him following allegations that he engaged in spying while looking for the Ark. Since 1991, the mountain has been closed due to Turkish military operations against Kurdish rebels in the area. Today the exploration of 17,000-foot Mount Ararat and the search for Noah's Ark has moved to higher ground -- thanks to high-tech satellite flyovers. Flood of data

To get up to speed on this search, it helps to start with the Bible. Noah was instructed by God to save his family and the world's animals during a great flood that would cover the Earth. To do so, Noah built a large vessel, an ark. What followed was a pouring rain lasting 40 days and 40 nights. According to the Book of Genesis, as the Great Flood receded, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

Now jump to 1949.

Aircraft imagery of Mount Ararat taken in June of that year and analyzed by U.S. intelligence officials includes a unique feature at the 15,500-foot level on the Northwestern Plateau. Then in 1973 and 1976, through the lenses of classified satellites, this "whatever-it-is" also purportedly stirred up the same community. "It's called the 'Ararat Anomaly'," said Porcher Taylor, an assistant professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and an expert in satellite imaging diplomacy and the news media. He has been gathering evidence on the novel feature since 1993, including a set of those 1949 aerial shots of the area, now declassified. Taylor said that arguments have erupted within intelligence circles for decades as to what truly has been seen on Mount Ararat. "Debates center on whether or not it's a strange rock formation, a crashed airplane, perhaps a fortress or some other structure hundreds of years old … or maybe something more interesting of potentially biblical proportions," Taylor told SPACE.com. Certain individuals in the know, he added, believe what is visible in certain satellite pictures is the bow of a ship sticking out of a glacier. The anomaly is apparently more than 600-feet long (183 meters), Taylor said, at least that part of it jutting out as seen in aerial and satellite imagery. One expert, a naval engineer and architect, when looking at the photos believes "prongs" or "ribs" of the keel of an ancient marine structure can be identified, he said. Divided interpretation Taylor recently took his plight to The Washington Times Corporation, publisher of Insight Magazine. That publication helped fund special snapping sessions using Space Imaging's private satellite, IKONOS 2. On four separate dates starting in October 1999 into the summer of 2000, photos of the mountain were taken by IKONOS and processed by Space Imaging, based in Thornton, Colorado. Space Imaging's Ikonos 2 can resolve objects as small as 3.3 feet (1 meter) across. IKONOS pictures snapped over Mount Ararat then were contrasted with the aircraft photos taken in 1949. A seven-person team of independent scientists and analysts scrutinized the batch of images. While clearly the photos show some type of feature, the team was divided in their interpretation. While some felt the anomaly could be human-made, others voted for rock or deferred to inconclusive data, Taylor said. One team member concluded the anomaly had apparently shifted, suggesting that its composition was foreign and not a chunk of the mountain. IKONOS imagery confirms that the anomaly is "broken" in several places. "The color of the anomaly is uniquely different from the surrounding strato-volcanic rock. The anomaly seems to be very smooth in texture as compared to the jagged rocks," Taylor said. If it's human-made, then what is it? By using satellites, such as IKONOS, the saga has become a "space-based Indiana Jones," Taylor says. Source: Space.com 23 August 2001

Please Support the Research of S8int.com!

Since 2002, Chris Parker has done the majority of the research and writing of articles for s8int.com. If this site has been an encouragement to you, please donate to support Chris's ongoing research. (S8int.com is not incorporated and your donations may not be tax deductable.)